Favorite music-oriented novel?

[RickdaPrick]

Anyone have any favorites that they can recommend? Particularly if they have a prog/fusion angle.

I just finished Children of the Neon Bamboo; now I thirst for more music related fiction. The description of the prog concert at the end is the best description of a concert I've read since the Power of One. If you read and are on this board, it's the perfect book for you. Can't recommend enough.

https://www.amazon.com/Children-Neon...CK55YB1P&psc=1

[pb2015]

The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe

[mozo-pg]

Close To Edge : The Story of Yes - Chris Welch

[Mister Triscuits]

The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor.

[Digital_Man]

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (it was later made into a movie with Jack Black and John Cusack but I read it before the movie came out).

There wasn't any prog or fusion in it that I can remember but it was very much a music oriented book/movie and I recommend it to most music fans (those who like stuff beyond prog) especially those who like lists.

[Digital_Man]

Close To Edge : The Story of Yes - Chris Welch

That's not a novel but a biography. I read it too and it was a very good one.

[GuitarGeek]

Not really music related, but Spider Robinson drops a lot of interesting folk and blues allusions into his books. In one of the Lady Sally books, one of the main characters mentions hearing music coming from the parlour, saying that it sounded like Mac Rebbenac on the piano (you may know Mac by his stage Dr. John). There's also a line in one of the books where the narrator is talking about the time he was bragging to someone at a bar about his guitar playing skills, until he realized he was talking to Amos Garrett (and then explains "You remember Maria Muldaur's Midnight At The Oasis? THAT Amos Garrett!").

The late Mick Farren also wrote several science fiction novels, after his career as a vocalist ended. One in particular, called Necrom, is about a washed up former rock star who finds himself mixed up in a JFK-esque assassination plot involving people from an alternate universe. Again, not really music related, but there's some good allusions in a few places that I thought were fun.

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

A two-way tie for me.

1. Sacred Locomotive Flies, by the late great Richard A. Lupoff. One of the first psychedelic science fiction novels, it's about the adventures of a band called Sacred Locomotive. At one point, they play 21st Century Schizoid Man. Very funny.

2. The Armageddon Rag, by George R.R. Martin, back when he could actually finish writing a book. The Nazgûl were an American band who put out a few albums and were becoming very big when their singer (an albino midget nicknamed "Hobbit") was shot on stage, just before they could play (for the first time on stage) their side-long epic, "The Armageddon Rag." A mysterious promoter seeks to reform the band, and presents them with a new singer ... who is an albino midget (how rare must those be?) and even sings like "Hobbit." He sets them on a tour, intending for it to end at the same stage where the fateful concert took place, and to climax in the band, finally, playing the Rag. The story is told from the point of view of a music reporter who, covering the tour, finds himself at that last concert with a gun in his hand...

[helicase]

The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe

Gets my vote too

[mozo-pg]

That's not a novel but a biography. I read it too and it was a very good one though.

Thanks. I misread the first post. It is an excellent book.

[Lopez]

2. The Armageddon Rag, by George R.R. Martin, back when he could actually finish writing a book. The Nazgûl were an American band who put out a few albums and were becoming very big when their singer (an albino midget nicknamed "Hobbit") was shot on stage, just before they could play (for the first time on stage) their side-long epic, "The Armageddon Rag." A mysterious promoter seeks to reform the band, and presents them with a new singer ... who is an albino midget (how rare must those be?) and even sings like "Hobbit." He sets them on a tour, intending for it to end at the same stage where the fateful concert took place, and to climax in the band, finally, playing the Rag. The story is told from the point of view of a music reporter who, covering the tour, finds himself at that last concert with a gun in his hand...

I was just going to mention that one. Great book, and so far the only one I've read by Martin.

My honorable mention would be Outside the Gates of Eden by Lew Shiner.

[interbellum]

The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe

A newer novel which has plenty of (prog)rock references is Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell.

Also very recently released is the novel Lost Souls: A Fictional Journey Through 50 years Of Pink Floyd by Edwin Ammerlaan.

[Unfrankie Valli]

I remember enjoying Slade in Flame by John Pidgeon. It came out after the surprisingly good film but it isn't a straight novelization, being different in a lot of ways and much, much grittier. Very well-written too by a guy who was a cryptic crossword setter for the Daily Telegraph.

The film's on youtube if anyone's interested. Better than the other cash-in 1970s Brit films with musicians in. Noddy Holder's great in it.

[Mister Triscuits]

Sacred Locomotive Flies, by the late great Richard A. Lupoff.

Ooh, I'll have to check that one out. His Space War Blues is a favorite of mine.

A newer novel which has plenty of (prog)rock references is Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell.

Oh yes, that's a goodie.

[Digital_Man]

Did anyone here read Songmaster by Orson Scott Card? I remember my brother telling me it seemed like a book Jon Anderson would like. I started to read it a long time ago but couldn't get into it and didn't get very far. I believe it was OSC's first novel (or at least one of his earliest).

[Zeuhlmate]

Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 (Janacek Sinfonietta)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10357575-1q84

[interbellum]

Also worth reading is the tragic/comic novel Waiting For Kate Bush by John Mendelssohn. "This unusual hybrid of satirical comic novel and music biography has two heroes: an American fan and the object of his fixation, the wildly eccentric singer Kate Bush." It was written in 2004 in a period people were waiting endlessly for a new album by Kate.

[Dana5140]

David Wingrove's "Chung Kuo: Book One, The Middle Kingdom." In it, he offers an acknowledgement to Christian Vander and Magma, and I have a copy he sent me after I somehow got in contact with him- years ago- about Magma. It has a nice sentiment he sent me. Well, it says "To Dana Lawrence, Hamatai!", and is a signed book. I just looked, it was 1989.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

My favorite is "The Songs of Earth and Power" by Greg Bear. A mysterious, reclusive composer's music opens the door to the land of the Sithe which our hero enters to much cool adventure.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

David Wingrove's "Chung Kuo: Book One, The Middle Kingdom." In it, he offers an acknowledgement to Christian Vander and Magma, and I have a copy he sent me after I somehow got in contact with him- years ago- about Magma. It has a nice sentiment he sent me. Well, it says "To Dana Lawrence, Hamatai!", and is a signed book. I just looked, it was 1989.

He name drops a lot of prog in the series' prefaces, IQ in particular. I loved all of the Chunk Kuo books, but don't think they have much at all to do with music. It's more the far future when the Chinese control the world. It's happening now! They play the long game!

[Mister Triscuits]

While I certainly can't recommend it on its literary merits, for sheer dumb fun there's John Brunner's 1969 SF-horror novel Double, Double. The protagonists are a psychedelic rock group called Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, and their dog, who are menaced by a shape-shifting monster. Imagine The Thing featuring the Scooby-Doo gang.

[markwoll]

So a couple of other, kind of outlying titles:
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is chock full of songs. The book is not for the faint of heart and requires a strong desire to finish. At least in my case, it was totally worth it.
Michael Moorcock's - The Cornelius Chronicles frequently has his band related fantasy sequences scattered around.
And even a bit more tangental
Iain Banks - The Hydrogen Sonata which features a character who undergoes body modifications in order to play an otherwise unplayable piece of music.

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

Ooh, I'll have to check that one out. His Space War Blues is a favorite of mine.

Space War Blues has been a top-five book for me for almost fifty years, i.e., since it first came out (and in a sense, even earlier: since I read the original novella, "With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama" in Again Dangerous Visions). Lupoff was an underrecognized writer, largely because he refused to do the same thing twice. He was also a really cool human being whom I was grateful to know...

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

Did anyone here read Songmaster by Orson Scott Card? I remember my brother telling me it seemed like a book Jon Anderson would like. I started to read it a long time ago but couldn't get into it and didn't get very far. I believe it was OSC's first novel (or at least one of his earliest).

Between his homophobia and his tendency to torture children in his books, I found Card unreadable after a few books.

[Mister Triscuits]

Again Dangerous Visions

You probably already know about this, but after all these years, Last Dangerous Visions, or at least what's left of it, is finally being published October 1.